Children from Calais Jungle camp living in UK granted right to remain by Home Office

Children from the Calais Jungle camp now living in the UK will be granted a new right to remain by the Home Office.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid will grant certain youngsters a new status to give them continued access to study, work and the NHS until they can apply for citizenship in ten years’ time.

This new “Calais leave” status will be seen as a clear attempt by Mr Javid to cast off the damaging “hostile environment” image presided over by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary.

A Government source said today: “It strengthens the right to stay of children pulled from the camps in Calais in 2016.”

More than 750 unaccompanied children were brought to the UK from the makeshift camp after severe criticism that the Government was not doing enough to provide refuge. Around 550 went to live with family already residing in the UK. 

Over the past two years the majority of the children were given the right to remain in the UK under existing international protections such as asylum, humanitarian protection and refugee status. However a small group fell through this gap.

The Government has now stepped in to create a new form of leave to regularise their status and protect their rights in the future. After ten years they can apply for British citizenship. 

A source said: “Some of those children did not qualify for international protection under current rules. To ensure all these children can stay here, we are bringing forward a new form of leave.”

Unaccompanied children from the French port town camp included Syrian and Afghani nationals. They were brought to the UK after outcry from MPs that the Home Office should allow them to reunite with their families.

The camp was demolished by the French authorities in 2016.

Mr Javid was set to make the announcement in the House of Commons on Thursday morning and will roll out the new status this Autumn. It came as a former Home Office mandarin today took aim at Mrs May’s target to cut immigration to below 100,000, claiming it is “out of reach”.

Sir David Normington, the former permanent secretary of the Home Office, said: “If you are going to have a target it would be better that you set one that is achievable to begin with, and that what we don’t have is one that is out of reach.

“I really do think that for the moment a target which is below 100,000, which is what they have always said, is out of reach.”

Labour also want to abandon the 100,000 target. Today Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott announced that the party would also end the need for non-EU migrant families to prove they have an income of £18,600 to move to the UK.

Campaigners claim tens of thousands of families have been separated because of the income requirement, with a 2017 Supreme Court ruling saying it had caused hardship and has an impact on couples’ children.

“Family members and loved ones are discriminated against. Non-EU migrants are treated worse, including those from the Commonwealth,” Ms Abbott said in a speech in Westminster taking aim at Mrs May’s “hostile environment” strategy against immigrants.

“If we want the brightest and the best to come here we will need to offer the full benefits of a family life. Otherwise they will simply be attracted to other countries,” she said.

Mrs May introduced new rules on spouse visas in 2012 when she was Home Secretary so that non-EU citizens applying to join a husband, wife, partner or fiance in the UK must have a combined income or savings of £18,600 a year. An extra £3,800 is required for a first child, and £2,400 for each subsequent child.

Ms Abbott said: “We will not impose minimum income restrictions on them. A right to family life is a right. It is not a right if the lower-paid or poor cannot access it.” - Evening Standard